Edu: Startup Storytelling - F*ck the Slides w/ Nir Zavaro

Yaniv: I do a little bit of investing. I've been demo days and so on, and I'm also a founder. And the feeling as an investor that you often get from pitchers, whether it's a three minute one or a 30 minute one, is they just point a fire hose at your face and just try to cram as much information at you as possible.

And I'm like, oh, first of all, It's hard to absorb all of it. Secondly, there's no structure, there's no scaffolding. Thirdly, it's probably all bullshit, especially if you're at the pree or seed stage. Nearly everything is bullshit except to your point near as the story and the credibility of the person telling it.

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Yaniv: I'm Yaniv.

Nir Zavaro: I'm Nir.

Yaniv: That's right. Chris is out this week at a big wedding.

So we have storytelling expert novelist and passionate salesperson, Nir Zavaro joining us as a guest host for regular listeners. This is a different Nir from Nir Eyal who we had on the show a few weeks ago. we actually had. Nir join us at the very last moment. So we're so glad, that you're able to join us.

Nir, welcome to the Startup podcast. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Nir Zavaro: Thank you very much for having me. By the way. I'm on a six month trip around the world. To promote my new book and doing workshops. I'm so happy that we get to do this while I'm visiting Tel Aviv in Israel. My name is Nir Zavaro and I'm a salesman at heart.

I've, written two novels. I've been doing marketing for 20 years, and, I'm now finally traveling the world and doing workshops and, the hopes of teaching a million people how to become better storytellers.

Yaniv: So exciting. storytelling is something that's very close to my heart too. Obviously coming from a completely different background to you as a software engineer. And I realized over time that even in technical areas, storytelling is so important and more and more as I've gone into leading teams and being a founder, The importance of storytelling is just absolutely core. So really excited to have you and, dive into this topic. Now, I know you have a book, like you mentioned coming out in September. It's got a great name. It's called Fuck the Slides, which I love.

Nir Zavaro: Thank you very much you used the word, storytelling, right? Everybody knows the buzzword storytelling, We're all storytellers. It's the way we communicate. There isn't an option where you're not a storyteller.

now. We can define how good or bad you might be, but you are in fact a storyteller.

Now, what's interesting is, Storytelling is the skill we do the most, yet practice the least.

If you could be a better storyteller, most probably you would get more done, Features would be explained better, so many things would become easier. And fuck the slides came to be because I was working with startups, I couldn't understand what they do. And then I went to the demo days and they were not interesting.

They were not inspiring. And I said, whoa. They're distracting the world. They're gonna change everything but the sound at the level of a freshman year college student where I teach and they're asking for 10 million, that's weird. And when I started to see and, understand how they do it, I noticed that everybody does the same thing.

we all put all the emphasis on how it looks. We don't like to write it down because it's a commitment. We're afraid of it. There's so many different things. So what we do, we design slides, and the slides are amazing. So working with startups and marketing and starting to work on their messaging and understanding there's a bit more of clarifying problems.

I don't understand what they do and how they do it. We said, wait, so of course the stories are not interesting. And of course they're avoiding them because they cannot define what they do. And I said, you know what?

let's forget the slides for a moment and let's define, let's write.

And they said, yeah, no problem. They went back and came back with slides, and then I said, you know what? Fuck the slides, no slides. I understand you need them. Let's write a good story. And that led to a two year journey of defining what is a good story for startups and then learning that it works for almost everyone pitching.

Yaniv: A few things that you said there really resonated with me. So the first is the beautiful slides. They're sort of beautiful and empty, right? And it can be very easy. You see like every startup pitch deck, every presentation at a big corporate. It has beautiful visual design of the slides, and yet, so little thought going into what you're actually trying to tell.

And I nearly now see it as a bit of a power play when I see ugly slides, cuz I'm like, you are confident enough in the actual content of your slides, you don't need to make it look pretty because you know that the actual story you're telling is compelling. And, I believe, a couple of years ago, the original pitch deck that Uber used was doing the rounds, and I think it was using the Google Slides default template.

It was so ugly, but it didn't matter because the story was good.

Nir Zavaro: Uber and Airbnb are the ones I mentioned in the book because we all know the Uber and Airbnb. They work. You get it. The problem is you don't know what they said in the meeting.

That's the key thing.

Yaniv: So the other thing I was reminded of as you spoke, is of course the, famous Amazon culture, right? if you'll read the book Working Backwards and you know about the famous, six pages and the PR FAQ and the PR FAQ is, a lot like what you're talking about near is start with the story, out what you're gonna be building based on the story that you can tell about it and Amazon bands.

Slides. So they really, they're like, fuck the slides on steroids, because they're saying slides are a crutch. they are a way of presenting bad ideas as good ideas, and so we are not going to have them.

Nir Zavaro: You go into a meeting, someone has the slides, they look at them, they talk, then they go to the next slide. They talk about them. Most of the time they'll read pieces of the slides. And there's a discussion now take away those slides and ask you, is your presentation ready?

You'll say, uh, not exactly. And then what happens? They need to wing it. They need to improvise what they're gonna say. So for example, have you heard of a concept called, fuckup Nights?

Yaniv: Yes.

Nir Zavaro: Great. So I was invited to do Fuckup Nights in, September. I did Fuckup Nights in Bulgaria. I was a guest there.

There's 250 people and five minutes before we start, and I'm the last speaker. Cause they do it in Bulgarian, I do it in English. And five minutes before they call us and they say, Hey listen, we're having a, problem with the screens. We're like, okay. So the option is we fix the projector and hope it works.

We'll take 30 minutes or you guys wanna do it without slides.

Now more people will panic. Right? what am I supposed to say? And we're like, yeah, sure, we'll do it. And it was amazing. Now, if I take your slides away, and again, I understand startups need, they must show slides. That's okay. But we need to work on the story first, So what happens? The slides, as you said, they're not just the crutches, but the basis for everything we work on. And that's where we're making a mistake in my opinion. Because if the spine is the slides, we don't know, we don't control. How many people have you seen present? They come off stage and ask them, Hey, how was it?

They said, yeah, I think, I think it went well. Yeah, I think it was good, but they don't know. And I said, I want to take that unknown out of the equation. you don't wanna work with a, ted coach People wanna be able to do it by themselves. So basically what we're turning into is a new way of.

Measuring or thinking because we're using what we say, the story as the spine. And you probably notice, mathematics of, spoken and unspoken, the verbal or non-verbal communication about 7%. By the way, there's a lot of discussions how accurate this concept is, but 7% will be what I'm actually saying in the other 93% will be the nonverbal, my intonation, how I behave, my hand gestures and everything.

The voice, everything is. So if I do not have those 7%, I cannot control the other 93%, and that's the basis. From there, we take it on with.

Yaniv: So, we talked about storytelling and, the fact that it's a very compelling concept, but maybe let's take a step back and talk about. What is storytelling and why is it so core to communication? we had Jenny Rad on the podcast a little while ago. I know you listened to that episode on communication and storytelling is obviously a very important type of communication.

So, what is it, and ultimately, what constitutes good storytelling in your view?

Nir Zavaro: I think the ability to convey a message or pass information, right? We still tell the same stories, for thousands of years, Greek mythology, I know I'm Jewish. We still tell the same at the holidays for thousands of years. This is how we're structured.

want to pass on the information, but more than that, we wanna pass it in an interesting way that people will remember. It'll resonate. With them. Now, if I present 10 pieces of information and data, it's not interesting. It doesn't convey the feelings of the emotions. And you don't remember and you say, I don't care.

Like it's great. I don't care.

Yaniv: you don't, remember and you don't care. So there's sort of two problems with bad presentation that bad storytelling.

Nir Zavaro: So my question is, if you are a storyteller, because you need to pass the information and you wanna share things, right? You go home and you say, wow, what a day I've had. It could be interesting, it could be boring. Now you're gonna do it anyway. And we all know these friends we have, when we go to the pub, the bar, a coffee place, we sit at home and they'll be those amazing storytellers.

It's not just about the story, cuz you and I can tell the same story. There's a difference in how we tell it because what we pass on, the information and the emotions and where you say, ah, I enjoyed it, it's an entertainment, and that entertainment is a vessel to teach me something, to educate me. Once we understand that concept, we can say, okay, how do I do it?

How do I become a better storyteller?

Yaniv: This is the startup podcast. So, you know, we, wanted to talk about storytelling in general and then a couple of really key types of storytelling that are important in a startup context.

And what is more important than to investors. Actually, there are some things that are more important, which is providing a great experience for your customers and for your users. But from a presentation point of view, from a storytelling point of view, being able to raise capital is so important and investors are, in my view, I'm sure you agree, they are far less.

Rational, calculating creatures, and they think they are. it's very much, an emotional aspect. And then, you mentioned demo days, right? Demo days are a particular type of investor pitching that is highly compressed, which I imagine is, where that art of storytelling has to be at its purest at its most paired back where you say, you have three minutes.

My startup was in Y Combinator, we got one minute. it's incredibly condensed. How do you. Get people to feel a certain feeling. How do you get people to walk away with a certain message to remember you and to care about you in just one minute or just three minutes? it's really tough.

So tell me how you've approached this.

Nir Zavaro: So if we look at the spine as I mentioned, and then we build on top of that, we understand what does the, pieces of information want to convey. Now we need to wrap it up in an interesting way. So let's take emotions for example. It's a universal thing. Every person on the planet knows DNA wise, we know how we behave.

If I'll smile, you, smile. So I know what I want to convey to you even now when I'm smiling. So we feel that we know. The question is, do you know when to make the audience, the people in front of you? Smile. in the three minutes, let's say if I look at eight, nine, or 10 paragraphs, these are the chances I get to convey a message and leave you with an emotion or a feeling. So once we understand that concept, three minutes is a lot of time. By the way, when we look at the audience today, let's take investors as an example. They will measure things in four boxes. One of them will be. how I make them feel. For example, we were working with a startup that was fixing a big problem of lost luggage in airports, and we all know you travel.

I travel When you do a presentation at the demo day with 60 people, and all of them are investors or VPs or marketing of people, whatever, they all know the feeling of standing at that belt and seeing the same suitcases going round and round and your suitcase is not coming out. You know that feeling.

Yaniv: Oh, we know it will.

Nir Zavaro: especially post covid.

So this means that I can give you that now with standing together. You are with me at the belt, hoping that your suitcase comes out. And it's a very simple example to show you how we pass that information. Secondly, if we are able to pass the information, we have an experience. Every single one of us will have those experiences.

What happened to us at that time? What happens to us in that moment? So we measure feelings, we measure experiences. we are able also to complete in our mind. I don't need to tell you every single piece of detail. During the storytelling And an example for that would be, I write books. Okay? I write novels.

Look at the novel. What's a novel? At the end of the day, you are holding a white paper with black ink. You, the reader, are completing how the dragons look, how my city is, the ships, the boats 20,000 miles under like you are able to imagine. So I need to leave enough gap for you to imagine. Then only then after those three steps will you take everything into consideration, take the information, and now you will try to convince yourself that everything you heard matches and the data is okay.

As you said, most investors, make sometimes irrational decisions because the gut feeling says if I go with them, they'll take us to a unicorn.

Yaniv: Yeah. It's funny, something that you. Reminded me of is the way compression algorithms like MP3 work, they're called psychoacoustic. Right? And basically the way they compress the music is they know what hints to leave in the music so that your brain reconstructs the entire tune. And so, it's not in any sense a compression algorithm like the, type that you use for zip files. It's based on the human brain and how it works and how it processes audio. And I think what you're saying is, it's the same thing when you're telling a story that by doing something small, you can create this whole you can create this whole feeling in someone's brain.

And that's a very powerful skill if you know how to use it and you consciously make use of that skill.

Nir Zavaro: So first of all, I love what you just said. That was an amazing example. And here's the difference. You were just telling me an example you said something about in engineering, and I was like, oh, I'm scared about what he's gonna stand. I'm, I'm gonna understand it. And then you simplified it in a way that I like I said, oh, mp3, I love MP3s.

And then you mentioned something and then you are talking. And what I'm thinking is, wow, that should have been a great example in the book. So what we say and how the other side reads it are completely different. Then we need to be able to control that.

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Nir Zavaro: So, when we discuss this concept now of doing a three minute, most of us go back to the same presentations and the demo day is interesting cuz usually you have about 10 startups, three minutes each. And we measure according to the second, the third, the fourth.

And we say I like that more. it's already a subjective matter of how I see the other groups. but they all have the same structure, which is kind of based, if you know the concept of the hero's journey, this happened. I had the problem, I solved it. I'm gonna conquer the world.

If you give me 10 million, I'm gonna change everything, which is great. The problem is, who's hero of this journey? What's gonna happen? I get it. But then I always hear the same structure and the same narrative, and it's not compelling enough for me. and then you will show me a pie that you are gonna do a market.

the market potential is 7 billion. The person after you will come in, they say, I have a 10 billion market. And you're like, oh, that's bigger. Is it good? Is it bad? It doesn't work. When we go to the movies and I love going to the movies sit at the theater and before there's the trailers, and the trailers is a concise two and a half to three minutes.

Pitch to make you want to go to see that movie when it comes out in the summer. at the end you say, I wanna go. You haven't committed, you haven't given the money, you haven't promised anything. All you say is, I'm interested. I wanna know more. I'm interested to see that, and that's why I called our pitch the trailer pitch.

By the way, one of the biggest problems we have today is actually in storytelling. The language we call the same pitch pitch deck, elevator pitch. We do all the same. We can't, these have to be different things. So I called it the trailer pitch in the three minutes. Instead of going in saying, Hey, I found the problem.

Here's an amazing solution. Here's how I'm gonna solve it in a build up. What I'm saying is why we don't have a lot of time, and I have 30 seconds within the trailer pitch of the three minutes, the hook needs to be about 30 seconds. It's about 70 words and you need to hear an example, a case study, whatever you need to understand what we do.

Then I have two and a half minutes to prove my point. Why is that different? Because today in the buildup, the heels journey, at any moment I might drop off, When you see a movie, I don't like it. I don't like the character. I'm not interested. I leave. So basically what we're trying to do now is instead of building the heels journey, And you sitting like this with your arms and you are waiting, convince me, sell me.

I'm saying, no. Why? Let's Make you as the audience say, wait, what? How? How do you do that? And then you lean forward psychologically in sales. Now you are interested. Now you are open. To hearing the arguments of the why that works. So 30 seconds is a hook, two and a half minutes to prove your point, and at the end you say, you know what?

It makes sense why? Because we use the false structures. I'm making sure that you think what I want you to think, and even now when I'm speaking, you are running everything I'm saying. Through your experience and your feelings and everything you say, Hmm, I like him, I'm interested. Nah, it makes sense.

That's how we work.

Yaniv: That's so good. I love the trailer analogy because Quite often, I've been on both sides of the table. Like I do a little bit of investing. I've been demo days and so on, and I'm also a founder. And the feeling as an investor that you often get from pitchers, whether it's a three minute one or a 30 minute one, is they just point a fire hose at your face and just try to cram as much information at you as possible.

And I'm like, oh, first of all, It's hard to absorb all of it. Secondly, there's no structure, there's no scaffolding. Thirdly, it's probably all bullshit, especially if you're at the pree or seed stage. Nearly everything is bullshit except to your point near as the story and the credibility of the person telling it.

And so it's so frustrating, and whenever I advise. Founders, it's, nearly always the same thing. Like I, could nearly have an auto-responder where they like send me a deck and like, my feedback is, it's too long and there's too much information in there because I've never seen one that, isn't like that.

what they're not trying to do is create a feeling. They're not trying to create an impression, just trying to put the entire smorgasboard in a blender and then they're trying to shove it down your throat.

Nir Zavaro: Why? Because they don't wanna miss anything they want. As you say, they throw the spaghetti on the wall and they hope something sticks and you'll give them money.

But I say, you know what, can you explain to me in 140 words, by the way, you know the word I assume blurb. We use it a lot

 Send me a blurb, give me a blurb, tell me a short blurb.

It became like the modern elevator pitch if you want. And when I teach today and I ask them, what do you do in one sentence, that became the biggest spiel I have for the last five years with startups. In one sentence, can you tell me what you do? And they start arguing the founders they say, wait, wait, you guys raised money.

You've been working together for three years and you can't tell me what you do. And in the workshops, I teach them how to do it in one sentence and people. The minds go crazy. They're like, wow. So this is what we do. And why is that important? Because then it drops everything around. It's not relevant. It helps us focus.

It helps us focus the audience. It helps us focus the product. If it doesn't fall under that category, it's out. Now what we do and how we do is where most founders get confused, right? We do a marketplace algorithm based on a blockchain to do machine learning. Ai, no, no, no. This is how you do it. This is the under the hood.

Yaniv: Yep.

Nir Zavaro: So the basic for a good, concise storytelling is that everybody needs to understand what you do. And then we use the concept of dumb it down. You are an engineer. You can have a completely different, conversation with someone, with another engineer, the fellow colleague than you can have with me.

I don't understand. And I meet startups in so many complex things, in so many different industries. I don't know their industries. I will never know what they know. I need to understand what they're saying. Comprehended my marketing, praying to teach that to my team here, So we teach how to dumb it down into three levels.

If not, I'm out. I'm not interested. Now the problem is many times founders go into the meeting, 30 minutes, it doesn't matter. Maybe they're not throwing all the details, but the way they speak makes me feel stupid or dumb. And the problem is with that, I don't like you for making me feel

like that,

so I'm out even if your product is good.

Yaniv: Yeah.

Nir Zavaro: Subconsciously I don't feel good. And that what we call gut feeling. I don't know. It doesn't feel right. I'm out.

Yaniv: just, as you're speaking, I'm reflecting on times where, a pitch has, left me cold because I feel dumb, or I feel that They're not explaining it to me in the way I would like to have it explained to me. so much of this comes to knowing your audience, going back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, right? Where if what you're doing, and I, remember on the previous podcast with Jenny, I talked about this as well. the magic of communication you get to change what is in other people's brains. and in return have, what's in your brain changed as well.

But I think what you're saying, that extra layer of nuance that's really valuable here is the way to change what is in people's brains has to take consideration of what's already in there. what do they want? how will they react to what you say? Because in the end, what you say is less important than how that is received and incorporated into that person's mental and cognitive state.

And I think when you talk about knowing your audience, really what it's about. understand them so you can understand what you need to tell them to get them to think and feel what you want them to think and feel.

Nir Zavaro: Exactly, so. They're all the same. And that's the interesting, and I'm now traveling, I've done 15 cities, major cities from, South Africa, Europe. I spent two weeks now, writing in Istanbul. And I just came back from Rio and I'm flying to Melbourne, on Wednesday. And are the same.

And we're Wired the same way. And once we understand that we need to, create a better claim fee when we go to the meeting, I can't know how everybody is doing, by the way, sometimes you just had a bad day and I now have to go and pitch and you had the worst day and you are not interested. the storytelling allows us.

To take you into my story, into my journey. And then you're like, Hmm, I get it. That's interesting. How do you do that once you are interested? You immerse into my story,

When you say, I go home, I had a bad day, I just wanna watch TV and relax. do you want? You want to immerse in someone has a story.

So, and that's how people are. a demo day is always a good example cause they're gonna be from 10 to 15 to 20 to a hundred people and I don't know them. I can't know every single person in the audience. True. If I go to pitch specifically to you and Eve and I know a bit about your history and what you've done and so on, it's a great advantage.

But that will go into a different place, which I can't always control. When I mentioned the blurb earlier, I teach how to use the blurb in every place. So it could be in your email, but also could be when you meet someone at the pub and they ask, what do you do? Okay. Or you go to a cocktail party to meet other investors and other founders.

That happens a lot. And you mingle and you wanna have, 140 words where people understand a bit about you and a bit about what your company does. They get it.

Then if they want to elaborate. That will go into the, next step, so once we understand that what is left is how can I measure if I'm passing what I want to the audience, so going from the hook, what we started to do is, what I like to call in the, the workshops is creating a love story.

I teach at the workshops on how to unfold the scene after a scene. Now today what you do is problem solution market, da, da, da. They're just divided pieces of slides. They're not even, connected paragraphs but the story is connected. It makes sense, the flow makes sense.

So I might use a piece of data that's relevant to competition in a different place. I might use a different, place to talk about something about the, features. It doesn't need to be in one slide, dump 10 pieces of information and, lose the audience along the way. And then once we understand that, we then put the pieces of information.

So in a 500 word story, about three minutes, you'll get a to 10 paragraphs, which is not a lot, but it's just enough to get a story. And if you put two pieces of information into each paragraph before you've started to write, you already have 200 to 300 words.

And you have a layout of how your story will look.

Yaniv: it's so fascinating. So, like I said, I really love that, phrase trailer pitch, because it, really captures the fact that you're not trying to tell the whole story. You're trying to draw people in so they want more. And then you're like, okay, if, all I'm trying to do is get them to want more, I can be much more selective in the information I share and in the story I tell them.

So that's one type of pitch. You said, you know, the language is unhelpful because there are different types of pitches. another one, and I love this name even more, is the toilet pitch so, tell me about the toilet pitch.

Nir Zavaro: Yeah. So, it's called the toilet deck because what happens is when you go into the trailer pitch, in fact with slides or without slides, you are the presentation. By the way, we were working with a, startup, fund.

They were creating the fifth fund presenting in the us. They went to The only thing. I was certain of is that most meetings will happen on the golf course or at lunch, and no one will let them open a, computer and present. And that's what happened. So the trailer pitch became you, my friend, are the presentation you need to be able to present.

If you have slides, they're a bonus. And slides represent two different things. We can talk about it later, but what happens is most founders will create one. Deck and they will use it when they present and they will use it when they need to send it before or after the meeting. But that is the wrong thing.

Why? Because when I present and I'm the presentation, we have the trailer pitch. The slides only need to play, a supporting role or scenery. But the toilet deck is when I send it to you and I'm not there. Now what I've learned, while researching for the book is most founders read them in the morning or in the evening, and sometimes in the toilet.

And secondly, the most important is no matter what happens, most probably I will not sit next to you in the toilet while you're reading my deck. So that means it needs to

Yaniv: That, that's why I got a phone with such a big screen, by the way,

so I can, fit a deck while I'm on the toilet.

Nir Zavaro: And now what happens is you are now sitting in the toilet. I'm not there. You need to understand by yourself what I'm talking about, which means you need to have a bit more text, might have a few more slides, it might have a different structure. And that is important. And that's why I'm saying we need to separate the things. pitches, when I'm presenting the toilet deck is when I'm not there. And you need, by the way, in the book even I mentioned that sometimes you want to have a different one for before the meeting and after the meeting.

Because before you need to get it, but maybe during the meeting we discussed things like, I don't know, lifetime value of a client. Right? the potential of the platform doing 1, 2, 3, maybe the roadmap needs to be more in depth, could be a lot of things. So you might wanna have a different toilet deck for the after that has a bit more information.

Now, you asked me, I think, last time we spoke about what happens if you want to do the three minute and the longer. Structure of a meeting. So what happens today is I'll go to present as a startup, I'll go and present, and I want to have as much time as I can with you, right? I want to have 30 minutes, which is great.

Then what happens is I will speak for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, bore you to death. You will ask some questions and we finish the meeting. But what would happen if I did the trailer pitch, and then we can discuss everything else. Right now you are interested,

Yaniv: and by the way, that's, been my exact experience raising capital, yes, if you have a demo day or something, you have your trailer pitch. that's important to draw people in. Once people are interested, you send them the toilet deck, Always send it to them ahead of time they read it, then when you get to the actual meeting, it's not really a presentation anymore.

Every single one that I've been to is like, okay, yes, like you said, maybe you do. The trailer pitch if that, but then you go straight into questions and it becomes a conversation. If you've done your toilet deck, right? you're not giving a presentation. Again, the slides barely even come out.

If you have them, they are there as, an appendix, right? Like if you need to pull some extra data and you show it, but

Nir Zavaro: Love

Yaniv: otherwise it's a conversation.

Nir Zavaro: Love it. So, In old days there was a major city called Babylon. Babylon was this city. They say in old times they had 350, 400,000 people there, and they had all the information, the biggest libraries, the biggest language, appendix, everything was there. And I named the last deck that we have.

The Babylon, the Babylon deck is the one you go into a meeting with. So I go into the meeting, I do the trailer pitch. Now we're having this q and a. They're interested. I'm interested, we have a discussion. When they ask me specific questions, I'll have all the slides if I need them with me on the Babylon deck, by the way, it might have as an Appendix 50 60.

We now have a client with 67 slides. But when you ask me about the lifetime value and I can say, oh yeah, let's discuss about the lifetime value, and I can show you that slide, that means that I'm ready. I'm prepared. I did my homework. It makes you feel good, right? You say they're serious, they know what they're talking about, and again,

it's about the feeling I want to convey.

Yaniv: I'm loving these names, but I have to admit, this is a bit obscure for me. Why is it called the Babylon Deck?

Nir Zavaro: So Babylon was the place. You have everything. Is there the city that had all the information? In old times, this city that had all the information with the biggest libraries, all the languages, people would come from all over the world to learn things there. And that's why it's called Babylon. And the idea is that everything that doesn't go into your trailer pitch, and you might need to explain, you might have to talk about, so I went to a meeting An investor asked a question, I'm like, Hmm, it's a good question.

We might design a slide with the information that will allow us to show that we've researched. We know what we're talking about. We're serious, we're putting in the work. It's about showing you that I'm ready.

Yaniv: But , just to be clear, this is a random access deck, right? This is not something you should be going through from start to finish. it's more like people ask you a question. You're like, here's one I prepared earlier.

Pull up the slide. So

it's, it's only a deck in the sense that it's all in one file, but really it's a bunch of individual slides

that you call up on demand.

Nir Zavaro: Exactly. And the idea of that, they might ask you some stuff, by the way, they might ask some stuff that you don't find it necessary to upload one of those slides. But in cases where you wanna prove a point, you wanna show the graphs because you have the information, you've done the research.

You probably know this, one of the worst slides you can see as an investor is the competition, right? and these people, they don't even have a proof of concept. They'll show you the competition. They'll have the, quadrants where their idea is above IBM that's been around for 200 years. and you as an investor, like, yeah, whatever.

but if I have enough time during the meeting and you'll ask me specific questions about the competition. And I have a slide to support the shows that I've done the research. It makes you feel more comfortable.

Yaniv: For me, questions about the competition are always like, do they have that peripheral vision? To your point, have they done the research do they understand the strengths of their competitors and why they do things the way they do?

Nir Zavaro: So you are asking the question because you have a different reason from why they're presenting the competition.

And a good story will align those.

Yaniv: So something that was fascinating when we were doing the prep near, you talked about having KPIs for your presentation, and I'm like, that's, great, but I've never heard about this before. So what do you mean by having KPIs for your presentation and, how do you set them and measure them?

Nir Zavaro: Yeah, so we discussed about how we behave as storytellers and our ability to improve, and then we discussed about the audience. Now, once I'm writing the story, 500 word story based on the paragraphs and the structure, now we go into the position of. Let's measure what we've done is good. Interestingly enough, most startups I meet will talk about the slides that have more, visual, the longest, which means most of them will talk about features and competition more.

Now, how weird does that, that you go for three minutes to talk and 15% of your time will be wasted on talking about your competition? So we measure the link. So how many words do you use and how long each paragraph will be? And the next things will be, what is the one key message my audience needs to take from that paragraph?

And then we only measure according to that. by the way, that's how you write in a book. You measure that paragraph. Does it serve that purpose? What was the purpose? Does it serve it? And lastly, are the key feelings that I want to convey to that audience? What do they need to understand?

And how do I want them to feel? Are they happy, concerned? Do they understand that asking that money is a risky move or not? Once we add those feelings, we can measure if that paragraph is good. Now, when I show that during workshops, people are blown away. Why? Because you understand feelings. You know what you wanted to say. So you understand the key message and word count, it's the easiest thing you can do. Once people understand those three things, we are able to say, is that paragraph good or not? Now, if you remember, I was explaining the spine. So the 7% would be what we've written the. The 93% will be about the key message.

Now, if I wanna, for example, tell you, let's say the product we've built will fundamentally change how everything in the world works. Or if I say the same thing, I'll say, it will fundamentally change everything. Not the same. But once I say excitement, safe, happy. There's all these emotions and feelings that you can convey.

I know how I need to behave. Now the biggest problem of most people, and you know that is all the engineers are usually people who don't like to present. They don't like storytelling and they say,

I'm not an actor.

Yaniv: The best ones do though.

Nir Zavaro: Exactly. So you know how you need to behave. And you know how you need to pass that feeling to me.

And then they understand. If I tell them to be happy because they defined, they need to show that they're happy. in some cases startups will go in and they start, with a joke to break the ice. The problem is you make a joke to break the ice, that's for you, and then you ask the audience to become serious for them, it doesn't work.

So once we define. the key messages and the feelings, we can control how you will behave. And that starts a structure of how the other 93% will appear. And what we're seeing is when we show that to the founders, they know how to fill the blanks, and then their story starts improving because they start crafting the words in each paragraph to make sure they're aligned with what they wanted to

pass on.

Yaniv: Yeah. it's, it's really good. So when you talk about KPIs, to me it's working backwards again, to use that Amazon terminology, right? You need to think, what do I want my audience to walk away with? And then I've got this tool set, the communication as a toolkit.

I've got language, I've got presentation. How do I make that happen? And then you can measure, I think that's where the KPIs come in. Am I making that happen? Is this content serving its purpose? But the, bit that's really missing, Nir, I think most of the time isn't the, measurement. It's the fact that people haven't even stopped to think, what am I trying to achieve with this presentation?

They don't ask that very simple question.

Nir Zavaro: Yeah, so they can't measure it.

Yaniv: Okay, so folks, I hope that's really helping you think about how you craft your pitch decks. I've been looking at a few lately, and I think this is so valuable because I think all the things nearer that you've been talking about are things that people really struggle with. And I've seen such epic products, fantastic founders struggle to.

Get their message across in a crisp, concise way. and the solution that they come up with is always the same, right? It is. Let's add more and more content and make it look more and more beautiful, that never solves a problem because, you know, it's like you're marching to the north and the enemies to the south, so you're never gonna get there.

Nir Zavaro: the concept in the book is, the best sale is a no sale. Don't sell me Open the door. That will lead to the relationship that will lead to the sale.

Yaniv: Soft sell is the best sell. Right? So there's another topic that I thought we could cover. A little bit more briefly, but I think again, so important to, well, really every organization, but, even more so in startups where time is your most precious resource, which is meetings.

I've never met anyone who's like, I'm satisfied with a number of meetings that I have. They're always too many, too long. there you've got some thoughts on how people can run their meetings so that they are shorter and more efficient. so tell us little bit about that.

Nir Zavaro: Yeah, so what I've learned in the last couple of years is if we took the same concept of the trailer pitch, you go into a meeting and you have three minutes. The first 30 seconds you explain to me the feature, the need, the everything. I understand what you're talking about, two and a half minutes.

To prove your point. And at the end, like in a startup, what is the one ask? If not, usually we go into meetings, you'll present for 15 minutes. We'll start elaborating, about this, and this is good and not, it doesn't work. But if you worked at home and prepared everything before, by the way, we asked people today to approve the text that they're gonna say.

With their boss. So not only are they exercising and improving, they're communicating with their bosses about what could be the solution for that problem. And then after those three minutes, we do in a very, structured manner, two minutes of each person explaining what they think. And then in the end, we wrap it up and we close.

Basically 4, 5, 6 people are gonna have a whole meeting with a decision. Cause we know what we need to discuss. In about 10, 12, 15 minutes, there's a clear ask that's very important in a meeting, and then everybody gets a timer. Two minutes, tell me what you think, and then we're done.

Yaniv: So this is specifically for, decision making type meetings. I assume this is where you're talking about where you need to get to a consensus and, I do agree that those are the meetings that are, the most likely to go way over time to feel fundamentally unsatisfying,

Nir Zavaro: You wanna take a sales meeting? Let's take a sales meeting. Okay? You go in, I don't know how it is in Australia. Usually in Israel, people come in about 10 minutes late. They will talk about the heat, the humidity, parking, and then we jump into the meeting. In a good sales meeting, I'm less interested about talking, I'm listening, I'm asking the question, and then I'll go into a 10, 15 minute rant about my business.

But you should hire us. What's important and so on. Turn that.

Into the trailer pitch, make them say, Hmm, this is exactly what we need and we've been doing this for

years. And then go back to what you mentioned, the q and a. I have the answers to everything, and then the ask is timeline, pricing and so on.

But is how you are gonna feel if you work with me.

And we turned it into 45 minutes.

Yaniv: So Nir Zavaro, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. If people want to connect with you or learn more about what you do or maybe even work with you, where should they go?

Nir Zavaro: So I think nirzavaro.com is the best. secondly, @nzavaro on Instagram is where you can follow my journey traveling around the world and teaching. And I would love to connect with people, which is always great. And lastly, we're about to launch a new platform called stu.app, is basically a story and a hook.

We're gonna teach people how to do the whole methodology of fuck the slides on a platform and the structure, the measuring, and then they can share their slides, their pitch decks, their trailer decks and everything else. I think you would like this cause we started the episode by you mentioning, Neal and, seeing that we both have the same first name.

I never liked my first name. Near as a kid, people copied by my surnames, Ava, since I was about six. I never liked my first name, but when I was trying to find a name for the platform, I stumbled on Stu and I said, oh, that's cool. And I look it up and what does it mean? And apparently after you harvest the fields, right, and you take, uh, everything and you tie it together, that's called the stook before they pick it up and near an ancient Hebrew means harvested field. And that was the first time I realized why. That's my name. So that's what I wanna

do in life.

Yaniv: Okay. that's, that's deep. What a fantastic way to end. and of course you have your book coming out in September, so one last time. What is the title of the book Going to be?

Nir Zavaro: fuck the slides,

Yaniv: and Available. No doubt. We're all good books are sold? Is there gonna be an audio book?

Nir Zavaro: This is gonna be an audiobook. I'm gonna record it even with my accent cause we thought it would come across as nicer. feel free on the website to sign up for the newsletter because we're gonna update about early sales and where I'm traveling next. So hopefully I'll meet you all.

Yaniv: Okay, fantastic. Folks, thanks so much for listening to the Startup podcast. If you found it valuable, you've listened to more than a couple of episodes, don't forget the Startup podcast Packed. Please follow rate and review us in your listening app. Follow our channel on YouTube and give us a shout out on LinkedIn or wherever you have an audience.

It helps other people find us, and that's really why we do what we do. So thanks so much and Nir, thanks again for coming on.

Nir Zavaro: Thank you very much.